The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Carol Kimball:

Leah @ 667:

Kurt Vonnegut did a riff on this concept with "Harrison Bergeron", where equalization was enforced by making physically gifted people wear weights, brainy folks wear headsets that periodically gave noisome bursts of static, etc.

Not quite what you asked...

Whiskers scratched
His cookie's map
That's what made his
Ginger Snap

Burma Shave

#111 ::: nerdycellist

I've been looking for books that make American History interesting.

Every couple-three years I dig out and reread Kenneth Roberts, each time thinking they'll be less good than I remembered. They hold up.

Re: cabbage/cauliflower

Cabbage was (is?) cheaper to grow and get to the consumer. There are frequent references to slums as smelling of old cabbage (which means the resultant gas as well).

Cauliflower is more expensive, so it becomes more attractive.

#63 ::: Paul A.

Joe @ #61:

Would you say that getting a moose (A. alces) drunk was more or less difficult than getting the A. alces high?

Hot air balloon? Zeppelin? Getting it drunk definitely sounds easier.

As I now have a grasp of deer/red deer/elk/moose, may we now clear up the difference between caribou and reindeer? I don't care what Wiki says unless someone here vets it...

Thanks for the links on good writing (or not!) and the clear instructions on how to link to specific posts.

Xopher, what a bummer.

If hugs help, virtual ones now and real ones with accrued interest at Denvention. I've been looking forward to meeting you, and the music thing since you first started talking about putting it together.

Very much rats.

Adding "color" to the above search gave a lot more links.

Basically, what they say is that a blue flame is no guarantee of safety. If the previously blue flame goes yellow and smoky, you may be in real trouble.

There are a number of more accessible articles on CO searching flame impingement carbon monoxide

Most of these deal with the flame having plenty of oxygen (i.e. not touching or wrapping around the pan). I haven't gotten far enough to find a color reference, other than that pink may mean someone in the area is using a nebulizer.

More modern ranges have better clearance between the maximum height of the flame and the pot. For this reason, the "flame tamer" Terry mentioned using with an electric stove is not a good idea with gas, unless it sits quite high on an elevated burner.

My professional suggested NOT googling "gas cock".

Cajun et. al. re: CO articles, flame height/colors

I have anecdotal post-trauma experience standing by the professional as we adjusted the flame and watched the meter. He googled CO and immediately pulled up several Penny* sites, which must have been on the link but were eluding me.

I'll check with him and get back to y'all.

* He kept citing "Dr. Penny" which I confabulated with the likes of "Dr. Ruth".

I have a second cousin named Kimball Smith (called Kim), for his father's mother's maiden name. His dad looked at his male cousins' litters of girls and did what he could for the Family Glory.

A friend married into a family where the mother's Lastname was the son's Firstname. Hers was complicated, hell in school and jobs, and she was so glad to marry and abandon it that she refused to saddle any child of hers with it.

The daughters were exempt, of course.

I would have loved to have been Kimberly Carroll in Junior High, but like many here, accumulated too much history to change or abandon what I had when that became an option.

The idea of me being a "Junior" would have loosened my father's bowels.

There were three of us uppity females in Hastings, Nebraska (pop. 25,000), in the 70's. We didn't move in the same circles, but were regularly filled in on the doings of the others by conscientious acquaintances.

No disrespect was intended to anyone concerning whatever handle they use.

My uncle, till the day he died, was called "Junior" by his mother, as a reminder that he'd never be the man his father was. This string has made me realize that the fault is not in the I-II-III naming, but in the attitude. If her patriarchal husband hadn't given her that ammo, she'd have made do quite well with something else.

Judith Martin can be delightfully dry in her persona of Miss Manners. "Miss" is her given name, not her title. There's a difference between saying, "Here are the rules and how they work" and "These rules are a good idea".

Though I do have trouble keeping a straight face when some guy introduces himself as Selfthought Handsome Stranger IV. Bow to the patriarchy!

The only queen I know of who has the added numeral is Elizabeth II, but England has been shy of queens who reign in their own name. There have been a whole string of Marys, but they get dragged onstage under their King. Figuratively.

According to Miss Manners, Senior/Junior/III etc. only apply to living members of the family, unless you are a dynasty.

When Harumph Worthy, Senior (I'm making up names as I don't remember her examples) dies, Harumph Worthy, Junior becomes Harumph Worthy, Senior, and his son Harumph Worthy, III turns into Harumph Worthy, Junior. Miss Manners points out that those expensive informals just engraved for "Mrs. Harumph Worthy, Senior" then become an excellent gift for her daughter-in-law.

This was doubtless set up by printers, who must now rely on brides to justify their engraving presses.

#592 ::: A.J. Luxton

I knew one wasn't supposed to let the flames [touch the bottom of the pan], but I thought it was only to avoid pan damage.

Brainpan?!

#593 ::: cajunfj40

That seems an odd possibility to me, unless the flame is also sooty and/or yellowish. I don't doubt that it happened, I just have trouble seeing the "how" there, absent the soot and/or yellow flame indicating incomplete combustion. Then again, when I last had my furnace tuned up, the cheery blue flames were apparently spitting out a higher than OK amount of CO, so something else is at work here that I never learned way back when in combustion class. Was it chalked up to the cold pot surface "quenching" the flame, thus preventing complete combustion?

There's a lot of old "wisdom" about the color of the flames indicating CO or lack thereof, such as violet-purple is always safe. It isn't.

Lots of articles here. Dr. David Penny is a recognized authority.

Re: flame height

Be sure the flames don't touch, much less bend around, the bottom of the pan on a gas stove (particularly an old one), as that generates carbon monoxide. Even with a range hood running full blast, you can still accumulate dangerous levels.

This happened to me recently.

Aargh. My mother was fond, as a child...

It's lucky I'm typing this,as if I were speaking, it would be hoarsely (and yes, Xopher, I am joking!).

#375 ::: Bruce Arthurs

Here's a question that occurred to me after I recently delivered a package sent from the "Magical Knicker Shop": Is "knickers" a false-plurality, like the old "pant"-vs-"pants" argument?

#378 ::: Roy G. Ovrebo

Are there dialects of English where they use pants singular rather than in pairs?

Yes, very old ones. "Pants" used to be made as two legs held up by a sash or belt, overlapped in the back, and laced together in the front to a pouch for the genitalia - the codpiece.

Monocles originally were more common than "a pair of glasses".

I don' know nuthin' 'bout knickers, other than "half a knicker" sounds like a comment from Mr. Ed.

My mother was fond of a rather elderly (to her, at that time) woman whose name was Mrs. Schmalhorst. Mom called her "Aunt Pony".

And I've always loved:

I work the iron

I worked the iron.

I have wrought the iron.

But you can't have wrought a check.

I smelt a rat? Can the minds here hammer out a solution? I'd like to iron out the difficulty.

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